Cirque de Triomphe
by TrisakAminawn
Summary: A cruel Owl sharpens his Talons, and holds Gotham by the throat, but the rule of fear cannot be complete while there are still those who laugh at the dark. Even a single Clown. [Mirror-Universe/Earth-3 rebuild.]
1. The Owl and the Dead Boy

The Terror pt.I: 'The Owl and the Dead Boy'

* * *

_We'll start near the end, with two familiar strangers._

* * *

In a cell on the highest security level of the highest security prison in the world, this is what the security cameras would have seen, if they had not been disabled:

A dark-haired man with a very handsome, extraordinarily cold face narrowed ice-blue eyes at the shadows outside his cell. He was manacled, even behind bars, and wearing only the shapeless grey costume issued to prisoners, but he was still recognizable as the famous, ruthless Bruce Wayne. "Show yourself," he commanded.

Out of a shadow that didn't seem like it should have hidden anyone folded a lean figure in a charcoal-grey hoodie. With its right hand it leveled a viciously sharp bolt in a small crossbow at the prisoner's heart, and with the other pulled back its own hood. Another man, much younger, who might easily have been the first's natural son, though his features were finer and his eyes much more blue, gazed back. His face was nearly as cold as Wayne's, and even more expressionless.

The captured Owl wasted only a fraction of a second on recognition, and no time at all on surprise. "Talon."

The younger man narrowed his eyes very slightly. "My _name_ is _Richard_."

"Is that what cowards call themselves?"

A tightness about still lips. "I only wish I'd run sooner."

"You ran because you _failed_."

"I'm glad I failed."

Wayne snorted softly. "Are you? Wilson will hunt you down sooner or later, so long as he's alive, and he's not the type to show mercy to the penitent."

"I took the life of one of his children and the voice from the other. If he does to me what you did to Joe Chill, I won't be surprised."

Scorn covered the prisoner's face. "Are you going to _let_ him?"

A pause. "No."

"Then are you really sorry?"

"Not sorry enough to die," the once-Talon shrugged. "But sorry enough not to kill him. I'm choosy with my murder these days."

"You are a failure."

"I am what I am." Richard did not seem to feel the need to say anything more, but merely held his position and watched the man in the cell where he stood, some little way beyond the bars that would electrocute at a touch.

"You aren't here to help your old master escape," Wayne stated at length. Glanced from the young man's blank eyes to the sharp, sharp bolt trained on his heart. Wholly calm. "Are you going to kill me?"

Talon stood in silence for a moment, eyes narrowed again. "I want to," he said finally. "You have no idea how much I want to. But there are a lot of other people who've made claims to your head, including at least one of my successors, and it seems greedy to cut ahead of the line like this, when I didn't even help bring you down. Unlike me, you can only die once."

He drifted a little closer to the bars on utterly silent feet, the razor bolt never wavering. "You aren't frightening, Bruce. They've taken your weapons, and your secrets, and your wealth, and your Court, and your servants. You aren't king anymore, and you aren't the Owl either. You're only a man."

"And you're not even that," Wayne murmured, poisonous, unruffled.

"Maybe not," Richard allowed. And then, for the first time, the corners of his lips bent up in the least of smiles. "But I'm learning."

"I made you," the prisoner once known as Owlman cut out the words like individual sharp-edged shards of steel. "Everything you are comes from me."

The younger man shook his head a very little, not disagreeing but dismissing. "I know you think this is just a setback," he said levelly. "That you'll get out of here and start building up a new power base, and take back your city. But if you ever get out of here, if one of the others doesn't get to you first—_then_ I'll kill you. Yes, you made me. So you know what I can do. If I come for your head, you won't even know I'm there until you're dead."

_Speak not a whispered word of them, or here comes Talon for your head!_

Talon darted toward the cell sharply, suddenly, something small cupped in his left hand, and the Owl jumped back, guard up. But the rogue assassin's hand only slapped against the wall and withdrew, without ever quite approaching the bars. The prisoner glared suspiciously from the back of his cell. The visitor's eyebrows twitched, infinitesimally.

The tiny device now glued to reinforced concrete squawked out tinnily: "_I am the terror that flaps in the night!_" A bar of triumphal cartoon music blared, and then silence fell again.

The Owl stared, and then his face twisted with fury. Talon—Richard—smiled again, a little wider. "I figured there was a reason you hated Jokester so much," he said.

"_I am the terror that flaps in the night!_"

"So I copied his style."

"Talon…" Owlman gritted out.

"Richard," corrected his old protégée, his old servant, the first of his tame assassins and the first to run from him. Ten years gone. "There is no Talon anymore. Just a lone old bird in a cage."

The tiny speaker on the wall broke into low, musical hooting—a recognizable pattern; a message in the Court of Owls' old coded communication, rarely used in the modern age but still taught. _Failure. Prisoner. Death._

"_I am the terror that flaps in the night!_" it declaimed happily a moment later.

"It's on a randomizer," said Richard. "Good luck sleeping."

He melted back into the shadows. "I won't see you again, unless you get free. And you won't see me at all."

"_I am the terror that flaps in the night!_"

Owlman's teeth grated so loudly it was easily audible across the room, and for the first time since he was six years old, as he picked his way out of the deepest dungeon in the world, very quietly, Richard Grayson laughed.

* * *

**A/N: **_The 'terror that flaps in the night' is, of course, Darkwing Duck. Whose nemesis, I remembered only well after writing this face-off, was his evil mirror-universe self. Hah. Owlman _is_ evil Bruce Wayne this time around, because Bruce (Negabruce!) has all kinds of potential as a villain that deserves to be explored.  
_

_Future chapters will concern a number of characters over the course of about twenty-five years, mostly Gotham costumes on both sides, which is why it's listed as a Batman fic. All forms of feedback very welcome. ^^_


	2. This Night Whispers My Name

The Terror : 'This Night Whispers My Name'

* * *

The Owl remained standing in the dimness when his Talon had gone.

The noisy device was unnecessarily near the cell. Certainly that meant it was slightly louder, but—Talon had specially advanced to place his noisemaker _precisely_ out of reach. Or rather, precisely _in_ the reach of Owlman, if he was willing to endure a little pain.

Unhesitating, unwilling to waste a second of whatever window was left in whatever Talon had done to the cameras, Bruce Wayne dislocated his own thumb, pulled his left hand from its cuff, crossed to the bars, and jammed his arm into the furthest-right gap.

The bars were not really far enough apart to admit his elbow, but he forced it through anyway, crushed over-bulky arm muscles through the narrow space, whole body jerking with electric current, teeth clenched against any sound of pain or effort. Bent his arm, closed his fingers around the tiny machine. _Failure, _it hooted. _Prisoner._

Somehow he managed not to crush it in his hand. Snaked his abused left arm back inside, crossed stiffly back to the bench, and sat. Still twitching slightly from the powerful shock, he returned his hand to its manacle, resettled his thumb, and contemplated the device nestled in his palm.

A few microchips, some wires, the powerful little speaker—this was enough. He could engineer an escape with no more than this. Possibly Talon had counted on that; he had said he wanted very much to kill his old teacher, after all.

"_I am the terror—_" began the thing in his hand, and he snorted and split open the casing with a thumbnail, ready to start making use of his materials.

Across the room in the patch of shadow, well out of reach, another speaker began to hoot, triggered by the deactivation of the first.

Definitely intentional. And Wayne smiled, because if it had been remotely connected enough to communicate even that much, it was going to be even more useful than he'd thought.

* * *

_Nothing ends._

* * *

**A/N: **_He's still Bruce, just evil. This is very late in the game, obviously, so a lot of later chapters are going to be set before this.  
_


	3. If Not You

'If Not You'

* * *

"Why me?" Alex Luthor grumbled, soldering a broken connection in his favorite power armor. Every single suit he'd ever built was currently trashed. War had left very little time for maintenance and repair. "I didn't do more than anybody else."

At that, the white-faced man in the green suit, perched on the countertop behind him, laughed out loud. "Easy, Lex," he said. "They need a symbol. I'm too crazy and criminal, Grod's not human enough, Bob's an alien clone and ugly as sin, al Ghul and Ducard are foreign…"

Alex snorted behind his welding mask. "You can be so cynical for an idealist."

"Part of my charm. I love people, but I'm not going to pretend they're not _stupid_ a lot of the time. Sometimes even crazy!"

"And item one on the crazy meter, they're calling for me to be President."

"Well, Wilson's already had his two terms, and after the last year and a half, you can see how they want somebody hard to assassinate."

Alex grabbed another length of wire. "Oh, _that_ makes the job sound appealing. You know how much work it is? How would I ever get anything done?"

"I'm sure the POTUS can block off _some_ lab time."

"During a state of national emergency," Alex snorted. "Oh, certainly."

Jokester watched him work in silence for a minute or so. "Somebody needs to do it, Lex," he said, more solemnly than anyone usually ever heard him speak.

Alex groaned. "And if not me, then who? Is that the idea?" He shut off the soldering iron, set it aside, and pushed the mask up so he could fix the other man with a look. "And stop calling me that."

"It's alliterative. The press loves it." Jokester cracked his knuckles. "Come on, Science Boy. We'll be behind you all the way."

"Catcalling and jostling and complaining every time I fail to veto a law you don't like, I know."

The clown shrugged, unapologetic, grinning hard. "Equality is hard to get right. I trust you a whole lot more than anyone else who could take the job." He leaned forward, not solemn now but very sincere, which was nearly as rare. "Come on, Alex. This is your biggest chance to make a difference _ever._"

The inventor sighed. "I'll do it, J. You know I will." He pulled off the mask entirely and set it aside, closing the panel on the half-mended exosuit. "Do you think they'd still elect me if I picked Bob as my running mate?"

"I think there's a thirty percent chance they'd elect you if it meant the VP would be a one-eyed tomcat." Jokester snickered, flipping a flathead screwdriver end over end in one hand. "He _did_ help you take down Ultra, shared weaknesses and all. They might go for it. He was made in the US. I'm not sure he'd want the job, though."

"Probably not," Alex admitted. "Last I heard he was in Hawaii. He says he's trying to be a real person. At least, that was what I got; his backwards talking can be tricky. He might be trying to be true to himself."

"Aren't we all," his old friend murmured. Smiling, of course.

Alex shoved him more than necessary in the process of reclaiming his screwdriver.

* * *

**A/N:** So somehow, Bizzarro became a major presence in this segment, despite being in Hawaii and being initially thrown in as a joke. Well, I'm okay with that. I have been hugely fond of Good!Luthor for years, but since this story is mostly Gotham-focused, he isn't going to show up all that much. We will see him again, though, especially when I get around to filling in the Injustice War.

_Edit: Since there have been questions, I'll add that this whole 'verse is, as the summary says, a rebuild, so it's _not_ set in the current Earth-3 as seen in 'Forever Evil,' or any of Grant Morrison's earlier reboots including Antimatter Earth, and obviously not in the Pre-Crisis version, where Lex was the only hero in the entire world. That said, elements from and references to a lot of established mirrorverses are going to turn up, especially to the version from between Infinite Crisis and Flashpoint, which originated the Jokester character. This fic was written with the idea of redoing that world as an actual hero setting, since it came the closest to being a real place and not just a source of crossover villains, and as such it kind of sprawls. _

_It will be fairly anachronic, being as we're starting late here, even if the story of a world never really ends, but I have an increasingly detailed timeline. There will be serious and silly chapters, and something like a plot, twists included. ^^ I welcome input. Yes, even confusing input; thanks Anon. (Owlman _is_ the bad guy here, though, if there was any doubt.) _


	4. All the Dying Children

Freebird: 'All the Dying Children'

* * *

_**A/N: **Okay, we have gone back in time now. Today's piece concerns a character that was mentioned in 'The Owl and the Dead Boy.' Well, two, technically, but Jokester's kind of a mainstay of this 'verse, and you've already met him._

* * *

A fancy little comlink hit the munitions-warehouse floor, and a second later was crushed with prejudice under a long shiny shoe. Right. Talon was no longer wired, and he was off-balance from the blow that had knocked the hardware out of his ear. No time like the present.

Going into a spin, Jokester slammed the kid against the corrugated iron wall. He knew his pin would only last so long, but hopefully long enough, and _hopefully_ this gamble wouldn't get anyone killed. Including him. "_Listen,_" he hissed. "We've been fighting for over a year now, kid, and I like to think I'm getting to know you pretty well."

Talon struggled silently.

This one spoke more often than the last one had; maybe it was his age. The first Talon had started appearing as the merest slip of a kid, yeah, but Jokester hadn't met him personally until years later. That one had grown all the way up before he disappeared, and ten months after that this one had debuted; J would only now put him at fourteen. Neither had ever been especially talkative, even compared to their boss. Of course, the Owl had been known to monologue occasionally, so that might not be the best comparison.

"You're not like the other one," J told the boy, winning a split second of stillness before his captive jerked harder, almost breaking his hold. Hating himself for it, Jokester moved his right hand with its taser ring higher, closer to the child's neck, knowing he'd feel a threat in the motion. Indeed, his struggles grew more careful. "You're angry," Jokester added. His voice was barely loud enough to carry the few inches to Talon's ear. He didn't want the Owl overhearing, wherever he was. The others could only keep him busy so long.

"At me," he admitted. He'd had enough vicious injuries to prove that. "At everything. But especially _him_."

He paused just a moment, watching that blank assassin's face. "I don't know what he did to you. I don't know where he got you from, or who you are under there. I don't know what happened to the last kid. But if you ever want to get away, if you don't want to be this—you can come to us. We'll do whatever it takes to protect you, if you do."

Talon drew a breath through his teeth. The boys were denied the full-face masks that the Owl wore, the bulky traditional costume of the Talon before Owlman had shaken up the ancient Court and claimed it for himself, but so far as anyone could tell they were also denied any identity besides the Talon, and so had nothing to hide besides their expressions. And they rarely had any of those, either, beyond the occasional hungry grin, and even that was mostly the first one, when he'd still been small and acted a little bit like a child. "Why?" the young killer of today demanded thickly.

"Because you're a kid. Because everybody deserves to be free."

Talon strained the same breath out again. Then he bucked, drove his forehead into Jokester's, brought a knee into his stomach, chopped at the back of his neck with one hand, and somersaulted away while the man recovered.

"Kid?" J asked, only a little gasping.

Lips pressed together, Talon flung a spread of shuriken to keep him back and grappled out through the broken window, withdrawing to his master's side.

Well, it wasn't 'never.' It wasn't even 'no.'

* * *

"Did you mean it?" Talon asked, six months later. He had Jokester at his mercy this time, disarmed, bleeding from one shoulder, on one knee on one of the docks. His voice was low and expressionless, but there was something, some tension in it…J knew what he was asking.

"Always," he grinned, huffing for breath.

"I've killed a lot of people," Talon cautioned him, tipping his straight dagger with Jokester's blood along the edge so that it caught the dim light, gleaming crimson and silver. He didn't have his predecessor's style or uncanny grace, but he was terrifying in his own way.

"I know." He wouldn't kill _him_, of course, not here or now, at least. The Owl hated the Jokester too much to allow that to any of his minions, even the best. His second stay at Arkham had been far more hellish and 1984 than the first, but he'd still escaped, no more broken than before. Owlman probably wouldn't risk it again, no matter how much he wanted to see anarchy brought to heel. He'd kill him himself.

"That's okay?" The boy didn't believe him.

"Of course it's not _okay._" Talon should be in high school. He should be doing homework and crushing on girls and all that stuff, or cutting class if he wanted, running up and down sidewalks, giving his friends noogies, eating an unhealthy amount of pizza. "But I don't _blame_ you. And anything can be forgiven."

Talon snorted. Twelve words was already just about the most Jokester had ever heard from him in one encounter, but he said, audibly derisive, "You Catholic?" He sounded more human than ever before, and Jokester felt something warm in his chest. He laughed aloud.

"Me? Something with that many rules?" He shook his head. "_Everybody_ deserves to be free." He tipped his head at Talon, eyebrows arcing high. _Coming?_

Talon shook his head. "Owlman wants you alive," he said, stepping forward, shoulders set with determination.

Jokester was disappointed, but he didn't let things get him down. "Well, at least he and I have _something_ in common," he cackled. And pushed a hidden switch.

In the ensuing explosion of the dock, he swam safely away. Hoping Talon wasn't punished too harshly for losing him.

* * *

They were in a warehouse again the next time Talon met his eyes.

It had been another four months since that night on the docks, and the boy was growing like a weed—J had surprised himself with a vaguely paternal interest in their youngest enemy at some point. Ed and Harley teased him about it, but she at least understood, and Harvey just told him not to let his guard down far enough to get killed. Waylon didn't care. Pam made no comment. It was being a father himself now, J suspected. You started to extend the constant concern to every titchy set of bones you met.

Right now most of that concern was focused on the five-year-old hostage in the middle of the empty floor. Her parents were Dominican immigrants and restaurant owners, and apparently too successful and courageous for their own good; they'd defied the Owl's demands for protection money—tithes, he called it, the pompous bag of feathers—and oaths of allegiance, and he'd sent his men to teach them the error of their ways.

The Ortices had gotten word to Jokester's crowd that they were going to need help, and they'd gotten there apparently in time, except that somehow in the melee Haskell—one of the Owl's more brutal subordinates; he'd worked for the Russian before Owlman's syndicate drove theirs out of business—had gotten his hands on the little daughter, and had a gun against her head. She was terrified. Her parents were desperate with fear.

_We don't even know her name,_ Jokester reflected bitterly, as he and all his people slowly raised empty hands in the air, knowing better than to call this a bluff.

Talon was in charge of this operation, technically, but neither Haskell nor at least three of the other seven hitters who'd been sent with him were at _all_ happy about answering to a kid. Driving that wedge further was, J judged, probably their best chance of getting everyone out alive.

The boy had a commanding enough posture, at least, as he waved Jokester, Harlequin, Enigma, Crocodile, and Janus into a corner, well away from their abandoned gear. J noted a heavy prybar lying abandoned within his reach, and resolved to make that his replacement weapon if he got a chance.

There didn't seem much chance of such an opening. "So," Haskell asked, not directing his question to his immediate superior but to his peers, "do you figure we should kill the freaks now, or should I finish the original job?"

"If we kill them while we still have a hostage, that's easier," said one of those peers, Civaldi, conspicuously ignoring Talon. (And unreasonably overconfident in their ability to kill J and his friends if they gave up the advantage of a hostage. Especially by _killing her in front of them_. Monsters.)

"The boss wants at least one of them alive, though," argued Haskell, bouncing the little girl in the arm that held her against the gun, in a ghastly parody of actual childcare.

"Kneecaps," Civaldi proposed, turning his gun on Harley's athletic legs. At this point Talon backhanded him across the face, in passing, and came to a halt facing Haskell and his hostage. He was playing with a long knife in one hand, as he often did, and had eyes only for the girl he had apparently been sent to kill.

"Let me see…" Talon murmured, sliding the flat of his knife against the girl's dark, tearstained cheek. J's stomach lurched at the thought of her face cut like his had been, and it was so hard not to lunge forward in hopes of somehow overpowering them both before they could hurt her.

Then Talon's hand had flown upward, knocking the barrel of the gun so hard and fast that it was pointed straight up before Haskell could jerk the trigger, and then his dagger had cut through the tendons in the man's elbow so he could no longer hold the weapon up to aim it at anything, and Talon plucked the Ortiz girl from his slackening hold and pivoted away, mule-kicking Haskell in the groin even as he tossed the child into her mother's arms. Without hesitating, the boy spun from there to punch Civaldi in the throat.

Harlequin whooped, did a handspring feetfirst into the nearest enemy face. Ed, deprived of his precious stick, made do with a punch. Harvey, ever prepared, whipped a cosh from inside his jacket. Waylon didn't even _need _weapons. Jokester, cackling at the top of his lungs, scooped up the crowbar and got clobbering.

It was over in less than a minute, half Talon's squad taken out by him personally before the vigilante types got anywhere near them, and then he stood alone in the middle of the floor, everyone looking at him. His chest was heaving, and Jokester doubted it was primarily from exertion.

J strolled forward before the tension could grow too thick, clapped a hand on Talon's shoulder, which was allowed, though not precisely welcomed. "Taking me up on my offer, kid?" he asked heartily.

Talon nodded. "Last chance," he said, and J knew what he meant. Maybe he'd killed children before and maybe he hadn't, but if he'd gone through with this, when he had any chance of an out…Jokester would still have kept his promise, but it would have been many times harder for both of them.

The boy's breathing steadied a little. He reached up to his face, dug with his fingernails, and ripped Talon's mask away, before looking back at Jokester. His eyes were greeny-blue, and spoke a hundred times more than the rest of his face ever had.

"My name is Jason," he said.

Jokester glanced over the boy's shoulder, very briefly, gauging his wife's expression and those of his friends. They'd protect the boy either way, but if what he'd done and been was too much for them to forgive, then he couldn't—nah, it was fine. Jokester's grin stretched all the way across his face, and he dragged the assassin recklessly into a one-armed hug.

"Welcome to the family, Jason." He squeezed once, let go, held the kid at arm's length. "Jaybird?" he tried, rolling the nickname around in his mouth. "How do you like 'Little J?'"

The lost, blindsided look faded from the ex-Talon's eyes in favor of irritation, and he rolled them. "I am so going to regret this, aren't I," he said, but not like he really meant it.

All of Jokester's friends laughed, even Harley where she'd gone over to reassure the Ortices and give the little girl any necessary medical treatment. "Don't be ridiculous," J chortled, clapping him once more on the bicep before turning him loose. "This is the best idea you ever had."

A slight smile bent Jason's stiff lips. "Yeah," he admitted. "Could be."

* * *

_**A/N: **And that is how Owlman lost his second sidekick to Jokester. Oh, look, more mirror heroes. Recognize everybody?_


	5. Pie

'Slice of the Pie' (aka Freebird II: 'Make My Heavy Heart Light')

* * *

_**A/N: **__This is set about two months after Freebird; the first section was written second and turned it kind of more serious than originally intended.  
_

* * *

It was a cold, bright night in Gotham.

Somewhat north of the city proper, the land rose sharply in low limestone hills, known for nearly three centuries as the Gotham Heights. They had been the site of a major battle of the American Revolution, but were long since given over to elegant homes. Many of the mansions of previous centuries had been replaced by high-end housing developments, real estate so near the city being what it was, and by far the finest of the edifices now standing was stately Wayne Manor, on sixty acres all encircled by stone and iron, and more subtle, modern security measures.

Tonight, the stars shone brilliantly on a heavy blanket of snow, keeping Christmastime vigil over Gotham. Only a few windows shone at the estate in the Heights, low and golden on the south side of the manor. From the window of the first-floor study, where a fire burned warm in the grate, the Gotham skyline could be seen glinting back at the stars, like a diamond necklace forgotten in the snow.

The master of the study sat with his back to the window, paging through business correspondence at the great wooden desk as though he had never heard of the holiday season. Eventually, however, the sound of his pen and the rustling of paper slowed and stopped. The grandfather clock tocked ponderously through the seconds, and the fire snapped, and all was still.

That state of affairs had lasted a good quarter hour already when the study door swung open, and the very upright figure of the household's only full-time employee entered silently with a tea-tray held before him, perfectly level. He set the tray on one end of the desk, poured from the silver teapot into the sole waiting cup, and passed it on its saucer into his employer's reach.

"Merry Christmas, Mister Wayne."

The benediction was met with a small hum of acknowledgement, and the tips of the master's fingers found the edge of the saucer, but he did not look away from the portrait of a young couple that hung over the mantle. The butler followed his look, and his professional demeanour softened slightly.

"They loved you very much, sir."

"One would hope," Bruce Wayne replied, lightly, as though to rebuff the suggestion that he was vulnerable to sentiment, tore his eyes from the picture and took a sip of steaming tea.

"Mince pie, sir?" the butler asked, lifting the rounded silver cover from a plate.

One corner of his employer's lips twitched in amusement. "Tradition, I suppose," he allowed dryly. He glanced at the wedge of pastry, but did not reach for the delicate dessert fork poised beside it, merely sipped again at his tea.

The older man hovered for a moment beside the desk, his duty complete for the moment, and then rather than leaving he spoke again. "Will young master Talon be making an appearance? He seemed to enjoy the slice of mince last year."

Irritation chased contemplation off the billionaire's face. "He came to make a report, not celebrate pointless holidays. And no, Alfred. Talon will not be appearing ever again." The old man's eyes widened, and Wayne elaborated with viciously perfect enunciation, "He failed me. Like the one before him."

There was a grey tinge to the old butler's face. "That poor boy," he murmured.

"He wasn't a child, Pennyworth."

"But too young to be a soldier."

Wayne shrugged. "Talon is a _weapon_. So it has been since Gotham's first bricks were laid. Tradition," he added pointedly. "People are cowardly and superstitious, and all most of them will understand is fear. Talon exists to create that fear."

Pennyworth's mouth pinched. "Your family has not been part of that particular tradition, sir."

"One can always improve upon any institution. At any rate, do not waste your sentiment upon Talon. This one may have been a poor choice, and somewhat lacking in discipline, but at a single word from me he would have cut your throat. Am I understood?"

"Perfectly."

"Good." Wayne placed his half-full teacup on its saucer forcefully back on the tea-tray and met his butler's eyes. "Dismissed."

Alfred Pennyworth gathered up the tea service and the untouched pie and carried them to the door. Paused with it open before passing from the room. "You do know that my loyalty has never been because I _feared_ you…Master Bruce."

The last two words were as gentle as they were pointed, and Bruce Wayne was left staring at a closed door for several seconds before he scowled, and turned his back on it. His eyes landed on the portrait above the mantle and he looked away again at once, brooding into the fire for a moment before rising angrily from his desk and rounding to the window that overlooked Gotham. From this distance, the city seemed peaceful, wrapped in goodwill toward man, but the Owl's lips twisted in a frustrated sneer. Diamond necklace, they called it? Cheap paste, at best. But _his_. And loose in his city were far too many rats.

The fire crackled softly, and one man stood alone.

* * *

At the same time, somewhere in Gotham's East End, another man stood on a shabby footstool, trying to get the attention of everyone in a crowded, noisy little room, and grinning from ear to ear.

His beautiful wife had made pumpkin pie with real butter and fresh pumpkin, the way she said her mother used to, and Cobblepot had sent over a crate of British Christmas crackers and brandy as a professional courtesy, which had resulted in a lot of delightful banging noises and paper crowns. Only a few of the attendees stood enough on their dignity not to be wearing one. He clapped his hands over his head a few times and bounced on his toes, and the conversations and honking of a noisemaker tailed off, and somebody turned down the music.

He grinned, pulled a notebook out of his breast pocket, and gestured grandly with the attached pen. "Thank you, thank you. It is with great pleasure that I call this gathering to…well, order seems unlikely, but a sort of loose organization. Waylon's with his mother, I know, and Ed said he'd be late. Harley?"

"Here, you great lunk," she told him fondly, handing a slice of pie up to the woman next to her, who was wearing a green paper crown with the grace of a queen.

"Pam?" Jokester asked, continuing earnestly down his entirely blank list.

"Present," affirmed the source of the pumpkins. "Which you know perfectly well."

"Hush, Red," Harlequin advised her. "This is a ritual. Process over result."

She knew him so well.

"Jon?" he carried on.

"Yes," said the long thin man tucked up beside the potbellied stove. He was the quiet type, when he wasn't talking about his work, but he smiled back at J, which was good enough.

"Harv?"

"I say thee both yes and no," deadpanned the former attorney. He got more and more sarcastic as he relaxed, and might have been slightly tipsy already. It was good brandy.

Jokester made a show of checking both boxes by Harvey's name. "J?" he asked next. "Present," he answered promptly. "Little J?" There was a brief silence. "Little J?"

"I am never answering to that." The boy in question felt more than secure enough by now to glower up at the ringleader of their little freakshow. He'd taken to bulking himself up in layers, heavy steel-toed boots and stiff leather jackets and quite often when outdoors a strong red motorcycle helmet because, he said, the Talon uniform was so close to being underwear it made no difference, and he was done freezing his ass off.

Harley figured there was a lot of psychological defensiveness being expressed there, but it _was _December.

He would have looked more intimidating without the six-year-old girl sprawled across his legs, pale brown curls pooling near one knee around crumpled purple tissue paper. Ella had decided this new playmate was the best possible early Christmas present, and Jason had displayed a touching inability to refuse her anything, including space on his sofa.

"Present," J marked down with his nonexistent pen. Jaybird had known he meant him, and acknowledged it. He had already surrendered to the inevitable, even if he didn't admit it yet. He'd laugh in ten years when Jokester trotted the name out. Right now, he grumbled.

"Complaining just makes it worse," Harvey advised him, making a small toast with his brandy. He would know; Jokester had rejected his first couple pseudonyms out of hand and refused to use any of them, especially Harvey's personal favorite. Only a lawyer would think 'The Bicameral Man' was a good idea. A _geeky_ lawyer.

Ella bounced impatiently against Jason's knees. "Daaadyyy!" she nagged. _She_ liked the list—got really into roll call at school—and her turn was being postponed by the endless digressions of grownups. J winked at her.

"Princess Ella?"

"Here!" she squealed, her hand shooting into the air and narrowly missing Jason's nose.

The nose wrinkled and he plastered himself against the back of the couch, which was a much more restrained reaction than he'd have been able to manage even a month ago. Six-year-old was _best _exposure therapy, but he was looking a little overwhelmed now. "That's everybody!" J exclaimed.

"Hurray!" his little girl shouted, joined by a chorus of less explosive cheers from around the room, because she had everybody in their circle wrapped around her finger.

But _he _was still Daddy. With that thought, he threw the blank notebook over his shoulder, hopped off his tiny footstool stage, and swept Ella off Jaybird's sofa, leaving the purple crown behind. "You ready for pie?" he asked, while the kid breathed a sigh of relief and then grinned crookedly at the pair of them. He was getting better and better at looking alive.

Ella shook her head. "Waiting for ice cream," she declared. Pumpkin pie was indeed best with ice cream; his girl had excellent taste.

"Who's a little princess?" he teased.

"Jason!" came the pert reply, and since there was no way he could top that punchline, J slung her over his arm and tickled her to delighted shrieks until the front door rattled open to admit a windswept Ed Nigma with a grocery bag slung over one arm. "Ice cream's here!" J announced, and set Ella on her feet with a kiss on the top of her head.

He flopped to the floor as she ran over to demand to be served her pie and ice cream, even as the door was shoved closed against the cold, leaned his head back against Harley's knee, and even if his face had never been cut open and sewn back together, he wouldn't have been able to stop smiling.

It was okay that Santa played favorites. He had everything he could possibly want.

* * *

_**A/N: **I swear I wrote this around Christmas.__The main contrast is still the canon order/chaos dichotomy, but being good has granted J access to the Power of Friendship, and being evil has largely divested Bruce of surrogate family, so this also.  
_

_Ella's not an OC, by the way, although she's not that recognizable yet so props if you placed her, and I didn't make up the geography, either. __Civilians in this 'verse are generally not mirrored, so Alfred is still Alfred, while Jokester is a crazy sap, Bruce is evil, and Jonathon Crane is shy. (Croc's canon mother was a horrible person, though. I can be arbitrary if I darn well please.)  
_

_Credit for 'The Bicameral Man' goes to my mother, by the way. Bicameral = two-headed, as in 'bicameral legislature.' You may now groan. This is currently my favorite dumb joke ever. Harvey Dent's sense of humor is not my fault. _


	6. Glasgow

'Glasgow'

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_**A/N: **The chapter I wanted to put before this one is being difficult, and I wanted to post _something_ on my birthday, so have some origin story. ^^ Diego de la Vega is Zorro's secret ID; rich idiot with no day job, giving him plenty of leisure to aid the oppressed against corrupt politicians and landlords. _

_Warning for some gruesome, but nobody dies._

* * *

'_The King's argument was, that anything that had a head could be beheaded, and that you weren't to talk nonsense.' _–Alice's Adventures in Wonderland

* * *

The problem with masks that were convenient to take on and off, J realized, as gravel crunched underfoot, was that they weren't just convenient for you.

He grinned at Owlman even as the big bully tossed his nice shiny new crimson-polyurethane helmet aside like trash. "Hey, Feathers."

"So this is the Red Hood." The Owl raked cold eyes over him like a handful of talons, enumerating fine brown hair that flopped over big stupid ears; nose and chin too long for good looks; hazel eyes bloodshot; teeth slightly crooked; dismissed it all. "Disappointing."

"Well, I wanted to be Diego de la Vega, but I didn't have the budget." J cracked his neck as an excuse to survey the scrubby lot outside Ace Chemicals, where he had definitely not intended to be tonight. The ocean lapped at the edge of hearing, almost drowned out by traffic on the overpass, but there were no nearby signs of human presence.

This wasn't good, he knew. It wouldn't be great even if it was just the two of them, Owlman having a conservative fifty pounds of muscle on him in addition to body armor and edged weapons, but Talon was here, too, with perfect, even little teeth flashing like fangs in a wolf's jaw, hungry for blood. Talon never got angry, and he was only four feet tall, but honestly J would rather fight the boss.

Not that they were courteous enough to offer him a choice of partners.

They closed in from both sides, with the leisurely, confident stride of apex predators. Sort of feathery tigers, which was almost funny enough an image to cheer him up. The kids they'd used as bait had scattered already, at least; J wasn't sure if they'd been hired or ambushed, but the owlcat duo had lost interest in them as soon as J got into the open, and they'd had the sense to get out while they still could. He fell back, knowing he would be cornered against the factory in another couple of yards. Needed a plan.

He'd been unmasked, but they clearly wanted something besides his identity, such as it was. He had a policy of not giving them what they wanted.

"Running away?" the Owl mocked, took another step, and this was going _nowhere_ fast.

"Well, hehe, you know what they say about he who fights and runs away…"

J bolted, scattering marbles behind him as he went. Made it to the corner of the building without getting a throwing star in the back, swarmed up the chain-link fence and leaped from there, froglike and inelegant, onto the roof of the low shed adjoining the factory proper, and slithered through a half-open window into catwalks designed for maintenance of giant halogen lights that were, at the moment, dark.

J crouched in dimness lit only by some virulently green vats roiling thirty feet below, whatever _that _was about, and tried to plan. This was the first time the Owl had come looking for _him;_ usually it was Red Hood messing with Owlman's plans, so he went into those encounters with all the gear he could possibly use, and several tricks in store. Right now, he had _nothing_; he'd been on his way home from giving Dulcita and Amacita a hand with convincing yet another pimp that they did not belong to him, and those marbles outside and the tire iron Talon had taken off him in the initial tangle were basically all the stuff he'd had left.

Nothing he needed to stick around and fight for in this trap, but how could he get out of here without being spotted? How long were they likely to keep looking?

A shadow moved in the corner of his right eye. "Aw, darn," he groaned, as the tiny ninja death machine slammed into him and sent him right over the edge of the catwalk in a flutter of dark red cape.

He landed flat on his back on a lower, wider catwalk, at Owlman's feet. They _totally_ planned that. Seriously, if they weren't such utter _bastards _he could really appreciate their show-people flair. "Heya," he waved up, somewhat out of breath, and started to roll to his feet. The Owl kicked his hands from under him halfway through, and as his chin bruised on the walkway, planted a boot in the middle of his back. Ooh. He was starting to miss breathing.

"Are you afraid yet?"

"I guess I've got kind of a suspicion tonight's not looking to be a party," J admitted. "'zat count?"

Talon landed behind him, soft as a cat, and J's attempt to wriggle under the guardrail and lose himself under the catwalks and vats came to nothing under Owlman's heel.

"If you're too stupid to learn fear, at least we can make an example of you."

Definitely not a party.

The boy held his legs down. He probably couldn't have achieved anything by kicking anyway, but he would have liked a chance to try. J felt a bare-skinned childish knee digging into the back of his thigh and wondered if Talon was still smiling. Normally he liked smiles, but not that one. He gave his best shot at a mighty thrash.

But Owlman had a knee of his own in his spine and a boot on his outstretched arm, and the other arm twisted by a great strong hand on his wrist until the tendons screamed, and he'd gotten overconfident and now he was going to die. _Drat, _he thought.

Just that, like he'd missed the day when they were selling mint ice cream on special, or the new episode of one of his favorite TV shows; a sort of sharp pang of disappointment at missing out. Guess that's it; had a good run, old boy. We barely knew ye. _Drat. _

And, _I hope someone returns my library books._

And then there was a heavy gauntlet taking a fistful of hair, thumb rough against the back of his ear as his head was wrenched up, and then cold steel between his lips and _pain._

He screamed, but the scream broke after the first seconds, broke and screeched out of him in fits, agonized, disbelieving laughter. As something desperate and animal in him kicked fruitlessly against Talon's grasp and locked neck muscles to keep his other cheek pressed safely to the floor, as blood poured down his throat and choked him, he laughed and laughed.

His neck couldn't stand long against the strength of Owlman's arm, of course, and he found himself all too soon gasping into a pool of blood, with the flaps of severed cheek muscle folded back against themselves by the rough force bearing down. Fresh-sliced flesh crunched between teeth and the freezing walkway, a single rivet clicking obscenely against the side of an exposed molar, and the knife was set again to the remaining corner of his mouth.

"Beg for mercy," the Owl rumbled. Barely bothering to imply there was a chance of it being granted.

J could see the man's stony face out the corner of his right eye, lips expressionless as any beak, soulless round eyes and those stupid little ear-tuft points at the top. His snigger came out as a sort of bubbling whinny. "Y'mushht bhe jhokin."

_Slice._

It should have been easier the second time. He knew what to brace himself for.

It was worse.

"That should teach you to smile," grated the Owl, as they let him go. There wasn't even time to fill his lungs and wonder if it was over before the same hard hands flipped him over, lifted him by the front of his shirt, and held him, one handed, against the safety railing, like he was a scarecrow full of nothing but straw, and not a person stuffed with blood and guts and awkwardly jutting bone.

Owlman's grim look bent into a smirk for just a second, and he reached up with the other hand, took him by the chin in a cool, deliberate gesture that was not quite gentle, and _jerked_ clenched teeth apart, so that the muscles tore that half-inch more toward the hinge of J's jaw with a soft, meaty rip that seemed to startle even Talon. _Glasgow grin. Cheshire smile. Very traditional. Everyone's mad here._

And maybe that would have been all, if he had whimpered or begged or even been silent, his ruined face the example, a lesson in the price of defiance that would persist the rest of his life, whenever anyone saw him. If he'd done anything the Owl could take as victory.

But instead he laughed, an inhuman bark spilling from the wide lipless gash that was now his mouth, because Owlman had never understood, would never understand the sheer _absurdity_ of it all, of his own brutal serious self.

"Y' don' ged i', duh ya?" he bubbled as he hung there, snickering, looking death in the face and unable, no matter how he tried, unable to be afraid.

"What?" demanded the Owl, his voice so deep and hollow and nothing like the uncanny shriek of the real bird. "What do you think I don't understand?"

"Why," J gasped out, shaking with laughter that was beginning to hurt almost as much as his face, tears prickling from his eyes and trickling down to mingle with the blood, and sting salty in the wounds. It really sounded more like _ouuhaih_, but it seemed like he was understood, and the Owl stood there, holding him, waiting for the question.

"_Why_," J said again. Blinked tears out of his eyes and tried to smile, even though it hurt more than anything he could ever remember, tugging at muscles that ended now in screaming emptiness, and he couldn't even imagine how he looked. He bent his head forward, and his captor was human enough to respond a little to the cue, closing the space between them a fraction to listen to J whisper:

"_Why did the Owl cross the road?_"

Teeth a bird shouldn't have ground with sudden fury, and J burst out laughing once again, loud and wild and hyena-high, droplets of blood speckling the Owl's feathered mask and broad chin. "Doncha geddit?" he asked. "Ya know th' _punshline_?"

"We're done here," said the serious, _serious_ man.

And threw him over the rail.

Roiling green hissed as it closed over him, and he had less than an instant to understand before his whole world became pain.

He could close his eyes but not the slashes in his face. And the acid was flowing in as the blood was flowing out and this was _exactly_ what it felt like to be eaten alive.

Whether the Owl and his Talon stayed for an hour or a minute, it was all one. Whether he escaped the vat somehow, without remembering, or was discovered, fished out, and hastily dumped away from the factory before anyone could lose their job, it hardly mattered. He came to with the soft lap of the surf pouring salt on his acid-burned limbs like a curse from his oldest friend, and dragged himself a second time from the sea.

Gotham took him back, as she always, always would.

* * *

**A/N:** _Hero origin. ^^ __The bit where he first got to Gotham and the bit where he got to be Red Hood will appear later. __Not merely a product of my diseased mind, btw; this is a flashback panel from the _Countdown to Final Crisis _Earth-3, with slight alterations__, and with the acid bath appended. A Glasgow Grin is apparently 'traditionally' accomplished by cutting the corners of the mouth and then wrenching the jaw as wide as it will go, so the flesh splits. Brrr. Happy Birthday to me, and thanks for reading.  
_


	7. Fail Better

'Fail Again; Fail Better.'

* * *

**_Boomph!_ **

On a certain chilly late morning in March, a ramshackle old brownstone in Gotham's East End shook with a muffled explosion, and brilliantly purple smoke began to spill from every crack and window, starting from the top down. A few seconds later, people began to spill after it, coughing and staggering and broadcasting various degrees of irritation.

"_Goddammit_, Jon!" exclaimed one of the smallest figures, tossing yellow hair. "I don't mind a little healthy chaos, but if you're going to keep blowing up _someone's_ headquarters, why don't you go back to the drug dealers we sprung you from, and do it to them?"

"Harley," remonstrated the man in the green bowler hat, who was about her size.

"Sorry," mumbled the rake-thin man who'd emerged last, hunching against cold or recrimination or both.

"All _I_ want to know," grumbled the largest of the lot, folding his great scaly arms, "is are we gonna start hallucinating again?"

"Ah, not this time," said the thin man, fingers drumming nervously at nothing. "It's just—I thought you could use—like ninjas, you know?"

The man in the hat chuckled, leaned over to pat him on the back. "Oh, J will _love_ him some smoke bombs. Especially if they match his hair. You're fine, Jon. Just keep doing your best." He shot a fierce look at the blonde woman, who bit her lip, contrite.

"Sorry," she said. "You made Ella's birthday cake fall, is all. Ed's right, we'd never send you back, don't worry. Let's just…find you some lab space that isn't in the attic. Okay? I'm tired of explosions, and leaking purple smoke isn't exactly…subtle. This is supposed to be a safehouse."

The big man snorted, and when his friends looked at him questioningly, swung his tail in a wry circle around the empty street. "Neighbors are so used to us blowing stuff up, nobody even came out to look."

Even the thin man gave a narrow grin at that. "So," he concluded, nodding.

"Lab space," the little man reiterated cheerfully, squinting through thinning lavender wreaths of haze and flipping off his hat to fan at it. "You could share mine, but the computers really don't like smoke, and I foresee that being a pretty unresolvable conflict."

"Still time to start over and finish the new cake before clownlet gets home from school," the big scaly man rumbled to the blonde as they made their way back toward the door. Overhead, a string of geese complained their way steadily, optimistically north. "And I'll eat the flat one."

"So very helpful of you, Waylon," she drawled. "What _ever_ would I do without you."

Waylon poked his nose over the threshold and gave a cautious sniff. "Cake is a two-person job?"

Harley shrugged. "You can eat the fallen one, if you'll clean out the pans and re-grease them while I'm mixing."

"Birthday cakes," the man with the hat informed tall, twiggy Jon, as they followed the other two back in, "are serious business around here."

Jon said, "I hate greasing pans."

They left the door open behind them, to let the rest of the smoke out, and the brisk wind followed them inside, smelling of city and sky.

* * *

_**A/N: **__Does this count as fluff? I think it's fluff. It probably falls sometime within the ten-month 'Freebird' time span. Thought I'd put out something light after last chapter. Scarecrow's full backstory is pretty far down the priority list and will probably never get posted, unless someone is vitally interested. Also, I made a continuity gaffe last chapter; Harvey's disfigurement comes _after_ Jokester's, not before. Cannot be refered to in the moment. Whoops. The error has been fixed. My timeline is very cross with me.  
_


	8. And the Outlaws

'…And The Outlaws'

* * *

**A/N: **_This one's dedicated to RaggleFraggle, who gave me the idea. Set maybe a month after 'The Owl and the Dead Boy,' which was set about two weeks after the end of that war people keep mentioning. Apologies to the city of Detroit and to anyone who minds swearing._

* * *

The rusted fire escape snapped under his foot, and Roy swore, emphatically but under his breath, as he caught himself on frame and railing without putting too much weight on any one part of the totally-not-up-to-code piece of crap, and eased himself onto the roof proper. Tar paper should not be so reassuring under a guy's feet. Rust belt was right. Fuck Detroit.

"Roy Harper," said a cool voice, and Roy pretty much had a fucking heart attack. The speaker, leaning comfortably against a massive air-conditioning unit that probably hadn't worked since the eighties, did not seem impressed by the gun pointed straight at his chest. Powered, or just nervy? "You're Oliver Queen's right-hand man," he added.

Roy lowered the gun but didn't take his finger off the trigger, or put it away. The man didn't seem to be armed, but he could be hiding anything in that big grey coat, and with the hood up, all you could see was his mouth. "I was. Queen's dead." He might even miss the guy slightly, if he ever had time to catch his breath—total bastard, but fun to work with.

"Long live the queen," replied the stranger, lips quirking to the side. Oh, a funny guy, on top of all the mysterious appearing and declaring.

"Was there something you wanted, or are you just here to annoy me?"

"You're planning on cleaning out the bank on Woodward," said the guy. "Don't."

"Oh, so you're one of _those_ types," Roy sneered. The insurgency and their stupid hackers had managed to seize more of his and Queen's emergency assets than he'd ever expected—he wasn't going to be desperate enough to walk into an open bank with a gun and a heist note anytime soon, but a midnight vault raid was sounding good. He'd never done well at keeping his head down.

"They're declaring bankruptcy," said Mystery Guy, without missing a beat. "The building's in foreclosure. It's not worth it. Go for the place up on Woodward and Michigan."

Roy blinked, reassessing. "Who the hell are you?"

Advice Guy finally raised his head and smiled from under the hood. Dark hair, blue eyes; about Roy's age. "Richard Grayson," he said easily. "I used to be Talon."

"You're the guy Wilson's been tearing up the country for for the last ten years." The former President had thrown a giant fit when it had turned out, after the dust of worldwide civil war settled, that none of the defeated black hats had any more idea where the assassin that killed his kid was now than his white hats had ever had. That Talon had been off-grid so long Roy had figured he was dead.

"Owlman's on the loose again," Grayson shrugged, bland. "I'm a little fish in comparison."

"Convenient for you."

Grayson pulled a little face, but also pulled back the hood of his coat. "I guess."

"So what do you want?" Roy asked. He'd have folded his arms, if it wouldn't have meant taking an extra second or so to shoot the man in the head if he tried anything. He was confident in his own abilities, but Talon was a _nightmare_. Famously so. Grayson might have gone to seed in ten years—he'd screwed up bad enough in the White House, come to think of it—but he might just have gotten better, and Roy wasn't going to risk letting his guard down around that kind of death machine. Another ex-Talon had handed him his ass once when Roy had taken him lightly, and Red Hood was a _punk_. Grayson he couldn't get a read on, and that was not reassuring.

"I can't just be a good neighbor?"

"Cut the crap."

"We worked together a couple of times when we were kids," Grayson shrugged, pushing away from the bulk of defunct technology at his back like he was finally taking this conversation seriously.

Roy remembered meeting Talon, when he'd been seventeen and Grayson must have been a couple of years younger, a slim little shard of black-and-red death that almost never said a word. He wouldn't have called either of them kids.

"You're a good operative," said used-to-be-Talon casually, "but you're not grasping the fugitive headspace. You're going to get yourself hauled in by the end of next month at this rate."

"Fuck you very much. So what's in it for you?"

"Well, I could use another pair of hands," Grayson began. "Working solo gets old after a while."

"So…you scratch my back, I scratch yours?"

"More or less."

"I see. There's just one problem." (Actually, there were like half a dozen, the most pressing being that he didn't trust Mister Mysterious here half as far as he could throw him.)

Pink light broke over the rooftop then, like dawn come early, and Roy grinned. Perfect timing. "I'm not working alone."

"Arsenal," said a cold female voice.

Roy's shoulders had relaxed. He regretted his choice of team-up sometimes, when she was being high-strung or throwing cars at trucks or demanding he get up and help her with something, but there was no security on Earth like having a flying tank for backup. "Hey partner," he greeted, not quite taking his eyes off the renegade assassin ten feet away.

Who didn't seem all that surprised, to Roy's mild disappointment. Had he been spying on them for a while, or just since they'd hit Detroit? It was probably her he was angling for, anyway; Roy was good, but not exactly a unique resource. "Hey," Grayson threw in.

"You," Kori said flatly. Grayson gave a little wave, and Roy scowled.

"You know each other?"

"She was my first kiss," Grayson twinkled, suddenly all alive with humor.

Kori rolled her eyes, which was a human gesture Roy wished she'd never decided to imitate, because it really didn't work when your eyes were one solid glowing green. "I needed Earth languages besides Greek, and you were presented to provide the English. It was not a gesture of affection. Talon," she greeted him, a little more friendly than the 'you.'

"Richard," he corrected. "_Please. _Are you still going by 'Nuclear Fusion?'"

"Starfire," she corrected in turn. "Koriand'r, to my friends."

"Coriander," Grayson repeated. Okay, that accent was _not_ going to win him points.

"_You_ are not my friend. Yet," she allowed generously, and turned to Roy. "He's helping?"

"He says we're incompetent," Roy replied.

"I did not!" Grayson protested.

Roy shrugged. Assuming it was given in good faith, the information _was_ helpful. "He says we should target a different bank. Apparently the one on Woodrow is empty."

"Annoying. But it makes no difference, does it? You will get inside and disable security, and I will break the vault door and do the heavy lifting."

"Well, I'll have to start my tac survey over," Roy allowed, wishing she had more discretion in front of the outsider. "So we can't hit the place tonight."

"I can help there," Grayson volunteered, and Roy frowned at him.

"Why help us?" Kori asked, so Roy didn't have to again.

"Like I told Arsenal," he answered easily. "It's been a while since I've had any kind of backup, and the new government is stirring things up, now that the worst of the war cleanup is over. Same reason you two need to learn how to be invisible."

Roy had been 'invisible' plenty, under Queen, but a lot of the details had been either handled by the judicious application of cash, or by syndicate infrastructure he'd barely noticed himself relying on. Grayson leaned back against his air conditioner, put his head to one side, and asked the still-hovering Kori, "What about you?"

"Me?" she asked, puzzled.

He shrugged. "I know why I'm on the run, and it isn't likely to change, and Harper makes sense too, but what about you?"

"'Nuclear Fusion' was associated with atrocities in the war and the years before it," she shrugged. "I am wanted. And recognizable," she added pointedly. She didn't stick out as much as some aliens, but between orange skin and glowing green eyes she needed a burqa to pass for human. Which was a dodge they had used a couple of times, actually. She'd stolen Farsi off a startled newspaper vendor to help make it plausible.

"You were under coercion with the Society, though," Grayson pointed out, proving that once again he knew _way too much_ about shit. "They'd probably acquit you if you came to trial. Especially if you agreed to join one of the new enforcement teams as part of your plea bargain."

Kori snorted. "Or they might not, and I do not _wish_ to serve any new Earth government as a weapon. I was brought to this world a slave. I feel no allegiance to its petty, inconstant laws, and no debt to its selfish little people." Grayson nodded, a look of deep understanding on his face. It was actually starting to creep Roy out, how he kept going from total blankness to exactly, precisely the right expression for the moment. It was like the guy had to intentionally turn his face on to make it work.

He thought about the dozen or so times he'd met Owlman's Talons over the years. Huh. Maybe he did.

"I remain here only until I find a way to return to my own world, and my rightful place as ruler."

Roy had heard it all before, but Grayson seemed honestly interested. "You never mentioned you were royalty."

"What did it matter? Superwoman, may she rot in chains forever, only saw it as another reason to gloat over my bondage." Kori shook her head. "For now, we are on Earth, and you will teach Arsenal and I how to live the lives of outlaws on this world. I will _not_ be captured again."

And that, Roy knew, was that. "Welcome to the team, I guess," he shrugged, without even a warning frown. Grayson had stayed free through ten years on the Most Wanted list, without even surfacing on the underworld radar. Roy could deal with his personality to get those skills, and it wasn't like Kori was going to give him a choice.

For the first time, Grayson seemed a little surprised, and blinked once before smiling for real. "Team, huh? I guess we need a troupe name," he said. "Flying...no, 'Grayson and the Flying Outlaws,' maybe?"

"I can't fly," Roy deadpanned.

"Are we a troop?" asked Kori. "On Tamaran, a troop must be at least five."

"And who said you were lead singer here, anyway?" Roy threw in.

Their new collaborator let out a cracked little laugh, and they spent the next few minutes bickering over the name of something that Roy would never have thought of naming. Grayson let himself get peeled off the front without much fuss, but he hung fast to the flying part even though it was completely stupid, and both guys appealed to Kori to take their side, which she declined to do, which probably meant she liked it but didn't want to side with the new guy against Roy. In the end they dropped the issue for the moment, and got down to the nitty-gritty of robbing Charter One bank.

Grayson really did know his stuff.

* * *

_**A/N: **So…they're villains, with the killing and robbing and all, but the fact that I love all three of them to death kind of came through. Jason has a family and hero status in this 'verse, and Dick's the shadowy fugitive, so when the Outlaws were requested, this happened. This required revisions to my previous concept of what he's been doing since he split after the Wilson incident, but I like it._

_'__Nuclear Fusion' is a terrible but technically accurate translation of Koriand'r that I thought made a great villain name.__ Evil Diana is a giant jerk. Kori and Roy now also have detailed mirror backstories; I think the Flying Outlaws will be back.  
_

_^^ Thanks here to my two repeat anon-reviewers the loquacious 'anon' and the laconic 'Rachel', as well as to RaggleFraggle and everyone else. This fic is abnormal and all-over-the-place enough that without feedback, I have no idea what people are thinking about it, so I love you guys and all your input.  
_


	9. Dundee

Red Hood I: 'Dundee'

* * *

_**A/N: **__Chronologically earliest chapter yet! Timeline lands this about three years before '_Glasgow,' _when J got himself carved a new face. And apparently now chapters from this era are named after places in Scotland. Chapters are hereby vulnerable to being retroactively added to series for organizational purposes._

* * *

Only once the last lingering patrons trickled out to the strains of 'Bridge Over Troubled Water' did he fall silent, drop from the stage, and draw out a long red scarf from the lining of his guitar case.

Whew. Long night.

Jack—provisional name only; he was still _John _to Edna and _Jim _to his friends at the university, and because Alonzo was a butthead he wouldn't drop _Jamie, _but he was test-driving _Jack_ at the moment and liked the feel of it—laid his guitar gently in its case and shook out his stinging fingers a little, as he gave the wooden face of the guitar a fond little pat. He wasn't especially good, not really, and he knew it, but the instrument was by far his most valued possession.

When he'd saved up a couple hundred dollars by the end of his first year in Gotham, through the kind of stubborn scrimping you could only manage when you were youngish, healthy, had no dependents, it had been a choice between getting a set of fake ID good enough to maybe get him a regular, legal minimum-wage job, or buying the acoustic guitar somebody had pawned at Rico's, and chipping the rest into the pot to pay for Kate's baby daughter's surgery. He'd decided the ID could wait.

Three months later he wasn't sorry, even though he _really_ wanted to get off the docks.

Currently-Jack didn't mind manual labor, but when you didn't have any kind of ID you could only work under the table, which meant _extremely_ terrible pay or seriously illegal stuff. Since he was kind of uncomfortable unloading crates of guns that might wind up shooting people he knew, he was mostly stuck with the terrible pay, and he wasn't liking this for the long term. The guitar represented an alternate mode of escape.

From the very beginning, he'd spent more time than he could really afford dawdling around listening to buskers playing their streetcorners and train stations, and his friends kept telling him things like he ought to be on the stage, get his own comedy act, go on TV, and these things together had led him to the discovery of the _other_ poorly-regulated field he was slightly qualified for: live entertainment. He'd polished his act up at a series of parties and open mic nights, and even before he'd started to get any money, he'd known this was the best idea ever. Hey-presto, _Jack-has-a-trade!_

Doctor Thompkins at the Park Row clinic said he must have been the kind of kid who found the tallest thing to stand on, anywhere he went, and shouted _look at me, everybody! Look at me! _She'd said this after he fell out of a tree in Robinson Park and cracked his ulna, and he'd sort of shrugged, but she was probably right.

…he kind of hoped she was right.

His buddy Roman had gotten him a steady Friday night gig in his uncle's bar—fifty dollars a night plus whatever people stuck in his guitar case, for four hours of live music and a stand-up comedy routine at eight that was starting to draw an actual crowd, these last few weeks. He tended to stay late.

It was two AM and everybody had gone home, even the bartender, and it was just him and Roman and Roman's half-empty bottle of vodka.

It was now time for his third job, the one that paid absolutely zilch. He started wrapping the scarf around his face, brilliantly crimson and delightfully soft. Roman watched and sipped at his glass as Jack-at-the-moment covered his distinctive eyebrows, and then passed a fold of cotton over the bridge of his nose.

His face wasn't that memorable, or recorded in any databases anywhere, but just because he was nobody didn't mean he wanted people he pissed off to get a good look at him. He was a nobody with friends, and anyway, Nobody was much more impressive with no face at all.

"You know you can't change anything, right?" Roman asked suddenly, rocking his chair back onto its rear legs. "With your mask and your fancy stunts."

Roman was nineteen and bitter with the growing knowledge that he was never getting out of the East End, that if he was lucky he'd probably take over his uncle's bar when the old man retired. He was sharp as a tack, and had big dreams and a big heart, and none of that mattered if you'd taken the fall for a buddy in middle school and had grand larceny on your record.

Jack worried about him.

"It all makes a difference to someone," he answered, as he tied the scarf tightly under his left ear. That was all he'd ever really wanted, anyway.

Roman shrugged. "Not making any _real_ difference, though," he reiterated. "Not at the bottom of things. You're a Band-Aid. You can talk a good line, but you can't bring hope to Crime Alley."

"No," Jack agreed, wriggling into the heavy, deep-red hoodie he'd found in Marcie's thrift store and gotten half off because she thought he was sweet. (He'd also convinced her to adopt a kitten, but that probably shouldn't be considered a form of payment.) "That's something we've all gotta do together."

Roman snorted, but Jack didn't give him time to say whatever negative thing he had in mind. "Besides," he continued, straightening his hood and grinning through the muffling layers of scarf, "root causes are _really hard_ to punch in the face."

Roman snorted again, but it was in amusement this time, and when he shook his head he only said, "Nutcase," and made a little toast before knocking back the rest of his drink. J-is-for-Jack stowed his guitar behind the bar, and continued through the kitchen toward the back door.

"Hey, Jack," Roman called out from the front room, making Jack stop with a hand on the doorknob. Roman fiddled with his empty glass. "…take care of yourself."

"You know it," he called back, and then the Red Hood hit the streets.

* * *

_**A/N: **__Roman isn't an OC, btw, though everyone else besides Leslie mentioned in this chapter is, due to acute shortage of canon civilians. 60 Batpoints to anyone who can tell me his surname. I'd offer you a made-to-order chapter, but thus far those are available for the asking anyway, so it would be a fairly unimpressive prize._


	10. Aberdeen

Red Hood II: 'Aberdeen'

* * *

_**A/N: **__Picks up where last chapter left off! We haven't had that since chapter two, wow. Normal universe, Red Hood has been established as an identity with a long history in the Gotham crime world, before the man who would be Joker took it up. Special mention goes to TheSoulsDepths and RollingUpHigh as returning reviewers last chapter. ^^_

* * *

Jack-pro-tempore left the Beacon Street bar through its back door, sporting a look that had been judged intimidating by eight out of ten persons polled, although Alonzo called it the 'casual-Friday mummy impersonating a stop sign' costume. Even _he_ admitted it was appropriately red and hooded, though.

Red Hood was a big responsibility the man called Jack had just sort of stumbled into one night—like most things, really—convenient stumblings and the kindness of strangers, that was his life in a nutshell—it hadn't been a long life so far, so it fit in a very small shell—he'd been wearing his red hoodie when he'd gotten involved in what he'd _thought_ was a mugging, but turned out to be Darcy Leadworth's dealer losing patience.

The Hood was Gotham lore at its finest. _Everybody _said they were Red Hood if they wanted to duck credit for a favor or reckless good deed, out of manners or caution; it was a name you hid behind, and Darcy had been quick to hand it to him before he could be stupid and fail to think of hiding.

But, well, once you fell into a role like that…why stop playing? If the shoe fits…

Edna said that back in the thirties, the Red Hood was a trio who stole bankroll from every major outfit in Gotham at least once, exposed dozens of corrupt police, ran a series of bizarre stings, and got away with it all for nine years straight. One of them was a cop, it turned out in the end, one of them had ties to the Sicilian mob, and the last was never caught.

Alonzo said that in the fifties there'd been two separate Red Hoods—one guy whose focus was avenging crimes against blacks that white juries had allowed to go unpunished and one guy who, according to legend, had known everything that happened anywhere in the city, and made sure news got where it needed to; reporters and police alike had gotten bundles of tip-offs from that Red Hood, and ordinary people tended to get anonymous midnight warnings just when they needed them most. Once or twice, the two had come into conflict.

There'd been a Chinatown Red Hood as recently as the early eighties, but whoever it was seemed to have vanished without a trace, and Lei Bao had told him the best advice he could take from _that_ one was to always have more than one exit from anywhere he slept. Lei was a chef, but Jack was pretty sure she'd been something else before that.

Ted, who was studying history and music theory at Gotham U, said the first recorded appearance of Red Hood in Gotham was shortly after the War of 1812, when veterans were agitating for their back pay, but that the figure had really _established_ itself indelibly (ooh, good word) in the city's folklore during unionization, when the Kanes and Waynes had hired private muscle to go after picketers, and picketers had gone after workers who broke the strike lines, and at least seven people in red masks had been right in the thick of things. Mostly for the best.

They were big shoes, was the point, and well broken-in. Jack wasn't fussed; he'd never owned anything in his life that wasn't second-hand. He could make a legend fit him, or grow to fit it. It had never mattered much anyway, who was under Red Hood's mask.

Masking red didn't do much to keep skin and bone together, but it _worked_. Jack was a naturally happy person—or if he hadn't been before, now that he couldn't remember differently he was a happy person, assuming he'd been a person at _all_ before the day he'd woken up in Gotham Harbor—and the only thing that had been stopping him from being thoroughly contented with his life of surviving and exploring and making friends had been that he couldn't _help._

It had taken a year to save enough to help with one surgery. People needed more than someone to help them put up shelving, and look for things and pets and people they'd lost, and help stretch dinner with another can of beans, and give them a momentary reason to smile. Something more than just another neighbor, and John-Jim-Jamie-Jack couldn't be that more.

Red Hood could.

Could be that was a selfish reason to go into vigilantism, that it made him feel good, but the point was, he was _happy_ now. Roman's point about not being able to punch the root causes of social whoseewhatsis in the face notwithstanding.

The only problem, if you could call it that, was that once you started to take responsibility it was hard to stop. So now he didn't just keep track of gang politics (or real politics, for that matter) because it might come in handy to know, and made good gossip even if it didn't, he kept track because it was his _business_ to know who was likely to do what where, and what the fallout was going to look like. If he didn't, how could he be where he was needed?

He slipped from Burnt Row through the Chopsides and cut through an alley into the narrow, winding streets of Old Town. Gentrification had taken hold in a lot of the area over the last twenty years—a lot of his Crime Alley friends used to live in parts of Old Town that had gone all up-market—but he still knew it pretty well. Old Town wasn't one of the late-night parts of Gotham; except for some of the bars and an all-night laundry or so, most businesses were closed by nine, and the construction crews cleared out by dark.

A lot of construction went along with gentrification; old buildings too far gone to save being torn down and replaced, which people got really emotional about. Jack tried to stay out of it. He didn't see how things were worth more for being old, but a lot of people did; he wasn't normal, not his place to judge.

Besides, _sometimes _he got it just fine. There was a new player on the scene these days. Now, when J—_Jack—_said _new _here, he still meant something that had been around since before he could remember, but this was only the second summer of his whole life, so that wasn't saying much. The Owl's group had busted in out of nowhere like five years ago (from Chicago, from Italy, from Colombia, from Hell; everybody had a theory) and started swallowing up little families and nibbling away at the margins of the others, and it didn't seem like it intended to stop growing. They carried military-grade weaponry, treated disobedience like treason, and didn't give back a damn thing to the community.

'The boss is crazy,' was the word on the street. Some rumors said he thought he was an actual owl, and ate small animals whole. Other people said he ate _human hearts. _During meetings. You could see the bloodstains on his gloves, they said.

Jack had learned by now not to believe everything he heard, but the note of fear people got when they talked about the Owls, that stuck with him. Everyone who grew up in Gotham knew about the Court of Owls; even _he _knew the rhyme and he couldn't remember ever being a child anywhere, but that was a bogey-story, an urban legend. It wasn't _real. _(Probably. Edna thought it was, and Edna had lived in Gotham for eighty-seven years and ought to be paid attention to, but a pretty massive chunk of 'everybody' knew there was no such thing as the Court of Owls—which was what the Court of Owls would _want _you to think, said Edna. Point.) Except here was this gang, using the myth, well-funded and ruthless and peeling away the loyalists from other groups like the layers of muscle in a well-cooked fish.

Now, on the whole Jack wasn't in favor of organized crime. They did some good, especially for people like him who fell into the cracks, but they also did some things he really couldn't forgive, and they got downright mean when people didn't give them what they wanted.

Still, he did like them better the smaller they were; little territories meant every street corner was precious, and the local don (or whatever) would usually do important things for a neighborhood that you could wait a million years for the city government to get around to, and still be disappointed. Ted said feudal reciprocity was a valid form of social contract. Maria said the smart crime bosses knew not to piss where they ate.

The Irish crowd in the Cauldron was pretty good that way, especially compared to the Falcones, who'd (according to the gossip tree) been slowly crushing the other Italian families for the last fifteen years or so and getting further and further from traditional obligations, or Dimitrov's Russian-and-sundry-other-Slav organization, which had been firmly rooted in Gotham for over two decades, and still didn't really mingle, partly because there wasn't much in the way of Russian neighborhoods anymore.

Cobblepot's group was his favorite, possibly because the Penguins were kind of crazy and all wore spats and carried umbrellas or canes, and didn't deal hard drugs, but mostly because Oswald Cobblepot took his sense of honor really, really seriously, and it had a lot more to do with keeping his word and not dragging outsiders into his problems than with avenging insults.

His _least_ favorite was the Owl's. They were so…_businesslike_. They were selfish and oppressive, and they weren't even having fun. And every single member of the outfit he'd encountered had either had no imagination at all or…been scared all the time, he guessed was what you'd call it. Not twitching-at-noises scared, or not usually, at least not until after he'd pulled the poltergeist routine for a bit that one time, but just walking around under a constant pall of fear that they'd screw up, and _then.._.something bad. Heart made a snack of at next morning's meeting, possibly.

Jack-for-now felt quite strongly that if his city was going to be conquered, it should be by someone _preferable_ to Bruce Wayne, not somebody even worse.

He reached the address he'd been given and squinted up into the looming frame of a half-finished office complex, all steely bones and new flooring. One of Wayne's projects. Jack liked buildings under construction; they were life and activity and bright yellow hardhats, and he felt a sort of kinship with them. He was a human-under-construction, in a way. Of course, _generally_ the buildings had blueprints and things all set up before they began, but did the buildings know that? Or did they wait eagerly to see what they were going to be?

No sign of a light, but—there! Eleventh floor, as arranged. Distinct motion. Only one, unless the others were standing well back. He'd gotten here early…but the other guy was _even earlier. _Gotta get up early in the morning to get the jump on this guy, was the saying, except nocturnal, so the early bird got up…what? Around sunset? Jack grinned to himself.

Time to crash a party.

He stole up the stairs to the eleventh floor as quietly as he could. Stopped on the last flight with his eyes just above the level of the floor, getting the lay of the land and taking in the lone looming figure gazing out at the Gotham skyline.

At first glance, you might have really thought it was a giant owl nesting in the structure, all bronzy flash of cruel hooked beak and huge flat eyes and jagged feathers, but there was a human underneath. Here was a guy with a bit of flair for presentation, Jack-of-the-moment thought, as he crept a little higher. Too bad he was a titanic jerk.

(Psychotic, too, but Jack had been informed by numerous people he counted friends that so was he, so he couldn't point fingers there.)

He couldn't make out any bloodstains on the gloves, but they were mostly black, so it might not show.

"Do ya really eat live mice?"

He didn't choose that as an opener just to be a good distraction; he seriously wanted to know. He stepped onto the eleventh floor.

The Owl's head snapped around—_not_ completely independently of his shoulders, so there went the human/bird hybrid idea; he owed Kate five bucks. The cape flared with the motion, and its edges really were worked like feathers…if he pounced on you, you'd go down feeling just like a little mouse.

Jack was prepared for that. It was kind of the whole reason he was here. Some of Cobblepot's guys had turned under the pressure of owlish expansion, and as proof of their loyalty they'd been asked to double cross their former boss and bring him before the Owl, to either submit or die.

The foundation in the construction site, next lot over, was still wet, and Jack knew Ozzie and his sense of honor. He knew how this was going to play out, between one bird and another.

Cobblepot's _loyal_ guys had managed to find out the meeting place and were planning to stage what they knew was a suicidal rescue, and Red Hood had dropped in early this morning to offer his assistance. He'd distract the Owl, they'd move in and extract their boss. Owl minions were already notorious for their reluctance to take any action without orders. Even if they had prior orders to shoot down anyone who interfered, which was likely, they'd still be less effective without his direct supervision.

(The Penguins were probably going to kill any of the traitors they could, and Jack didn't like that, but he liked it marginally better than the other way around, and…he was tired of letting this guy do whatever he wanted.)

"Huh?" he prompted. "Come on, I got money riding on this."

The Owl said nothing. He had a strong, blunt jaw—a bruiser's chin—but his mouth was thin and humorless—a judge's mouth. Even without his reputation, Jack didn't think he'd like him much.

"Look, if you don't want people saying things like that, don't dress like a bird. Themes are nice and all, but you've gotta elaborate enough people know what direction to take it." Nothing. "You don't wanna hear the owl pellet theories." Wow, _nothing. _Silent glaring from behind goggles was surprisingly effective. "Look, whatcha want in Gotham anyway?"

Finally, he said something—deep, scornful voice, not a hoot or a screech; hell, he made _Jack_ feel screechy.

"I am the King of Owls. This city belongs to me."

"Really?" Jack rubbed at the bridge of his nose through crimson fabric, squinting thoughtfully at the man he'd heard so much about. He was fairly impressive in person. Broad shoulders, brawny chest to match the voice, hands that could wrap around the average neck and crush any chance of breathing, never mind a skinny one like Jack's. "Cuz I have to point out, most of the people who live here…they ain't owls. Kinda outside your jurisdiction, right?"

"Gotham is the City of Owls." His attention, and presumably his hidden eyes, flicked over Jack's mask and hood, and he must have heard there was a new Red Hood because there was something like recognition there. "You are merely the scum in its gutters."

Jack pulled a face no one could actually see. "Owch. That gets me, you know? Right here." He tapped himself over the heart. It was pounding, and he wondered if this was what fear felt like. He didn't think so. He was angry, and he was excited, and he was brimming with hilarity, but nothing in him was sorry for getting himself into this.

He hated bullies.

Already Jack could say with some certainty that this Owl character wasn't Mafia. Even a batshit crazy Mafioso had some sense of connection to the man on the street, no matter how high he climbed. No, _this_ guy really meant it literally when he called himself a king of a mythical conspiracy.

…it seemed kind of like a waste of insanity. He should go into painting, or something.

Giant-Owl-Man loomed. "Are you trying to be funny?"

"I _am_ being funny. Not my fault if you don't have a sense of humor. It's okay, though, I knew that going in, cuz you're meeting Mob guys in half a building dressed up as a bird and you're not smiling. Did your parents have it surgically removed when you were a kid?"

King Bird had already been bristling, but at the last bit he managed to draw himself up another inch. The feathers at his neck spiked just like on a real bird. What was that _made _of? "Watch your tongue," he bit out.

"Is it the surgery thing or the parents thing? I promise, I won't make any your-mom jokes; I'm above that. You can, though; I never knew my mother, so I won't take it personally—"

He had to stop talking for a second to lean sharply backward out of the way of a hand grasping for his throat. Looked like the Owl had noticed the same thing he had about their relative sizes. _Ooor _maybe he was just the strangling type. "That's just harsh," he tutted, as he took a step or so back to get his feet under his head again, and straightened up. "I guess it's not really good form to mock people's disabilities, though," he acknowledged. "Sorry about that."

The big man closed the new distance with a single heavy step and then swung an equally heavy fist at J's face, one he wove away from just enough that it passed over his shoulder. "Whoops, eheh."

The next blow was faster, lower, and he caught it with both hands an inch from his gut. Ducked backward out of the way of the other fist. "Oh, come on, you're not even trying," he clucked. Did the Owl think he'd slugged his way through every slum in Gotham with a 90%+ victory rate on a base of _incompetence?_

The next punch was a jab like lightning that he saw coming for his face but couldn't completely dodge. He smirked in defiance of an aching cheekbone. "That all ya got?"

The King In Feathers was silent a second, as though he thought he could stare J's secrets out through his muffled face. "Is there some reason you want me to kill you?" he asked at last, and right then, giving in to curiosity, for the first time he was human. Jack could almost see the actual person showing through under the mask.

But even if he didn't eat human hearts, the person underneath was still a coldblooded murderer who, if he'd ever had a reason Jack could have understood, must have forgotten it a long time ago. Because all he'd ever done as the Owl showed only an all-consuming need to bring everything under his control, and rule over it. And Red Hood's goal tonight was to get his undivided attention.

"I'm not afraid of you," he spelled out, carefully, as if he thought the other man was a little slow.

The Owl lashed out, rode through his block, laid him out flat on his back at the edge of the floor, with the city stretching out behind him, through the gap where a wall did not yet exist. "_You should be._"

Jack-tonight looked up, daubing a trickle of blood from his lip with the bit of scarf wrapped over it, grinning, and shrugged. "Hehe. Probably," he admitted. "But I've always been a bit…screwloose." With that, he rolled backward, out over the long drop to the pavement, infinitely rewarded by an instant of shock on his enemy's masked face.

For a moment he twisted through empty air, and then just as his toes pointed to the ground he seized the exposed girder with both hands, put a little extra spin into his fall, _swung_, and dropped neatly onto the floor below, through its identical lack of outer wall.

From overhead he heard a wordless growl of frustration, and he whooped aloud as he scrambled for the nearest stairs, knowing the shadow of death would be following him.

_Hunt me, birdie,_ he thought, grinning under his scarf as he pounded down metal steps, incautious of noise. _Keep those big cold eyes on me and don't look at anybody else. Look at me!_

_I can take it._

* * *

_**A/N: **__First encounter! Much history yay. Very different heroing approach this universe. ^^ Did you know that Aberdeen has been inhabited by humans for 8,000 years? Before that it was a nest of dragons. One of these statements is a lie. Happy Mother's Day! Sorry this chapter is wholly inappropriate to the festivities.  
_


	11. Nightingale

Freebird III: 'Nightingale (In A Golden Cage?)'

* * *

"Fuck," Jason pronounced, slamming a folded newspaper down on the kitchen table.

"Language," Harley reproved, absently. She was reading a medical journal on her laptop and mashing potatoes at the same time, with predictably lumpy results.

J never bothered twitting the kid about his foul mouth. He'd never heard either Talon swear, so cursing was probably something from before he'd been taken, which meant he approved of it asserting itself, and anyway, life was too short to go around restricting what other people could say. Harl liked feeling maternal, though, and probably worried about Ella picking up some of those words.

He knew this was serious when Jason didn't roll his eyes or even seem to hear Harley, so he turned his back on the sautéing mushrooms and fajitas to give the teenager in the leather jacket his full attention.

"He's got a new one," Jason announced, and handed Jokester the paper. Front page of the society section—after last week's tragic, mysterious death of Mr. and Mrs. Drake of Bristol, Gotham's own Bruce Wayne had stepped forward to take custody of their orphaned son. There was a whole load of twaddle, of course, but the important part was the picture, which Jason stabbed out with one gloved forefinger. "See?"

Jokester saw. There was Wayne, in his usual perfect suit, with his perfect razor-thin smile and a hand on the shoulder of a small dark-haired boy, whose face was perfectly expressionless. "Could he maybe just want control of the Drake company?" he asked hopefully, though not with a great deal of actual hope. It was still strange, after all these years of hating and guessing, to have had Jason confirm with perfect confidence that Owlman was in fact Bruce Wayne. He'd suspected, of course, more and more, but _knowing _was something different.

Jaybird shot him a scornful look. "It's a Gotham company." Which meant he already had all the control he needed, and certainly didn't need to disrupt his home life with a child just to gain more. Jason tapped the photo again.

Timothy Drake (10) had blue eyes, high cheekbones, and a dancer's build. "Word on the street is already everyone laying odds whether the kid's a carbon copy getting groomed to take over the empire, or royally fucked in the literal sense," Jason reported disgustedly. "Cobblepot's guys think the kid conspired with Wayne to off his own 'rents. _Something's _sure different this time, kid in the _papers_. All I know is he's the Owl's _type_." He combed a hand feverishly through his own messy black hair. "No way that's coincidence."

Harley had lost interest in both journal and potatoes some time ago, and now she stood sharply. "Jason," she said, nakedly concerned.

"Not like that." Jason flapped an irritated hand. "Hell knows if he wanted that he could have taken it any time, I've _told_ you." Therapy for a teenager as heavily traumatized and as defensive as Jason was heavy going, and Jokester knew his wife worried her young patient was using denial to cope. "The kid looks like a Talon. _Fuck._" He kicked the base of the stove, making the pans rattle.

J was nearer than Harley, so he put a hand on Jason's shoulder. "It's okay, Jay lad."

"I want to hate him," Jason bit out, eyes fixed on the floor. "I want to believe he's this soulless, preppy little demon who signed up for this shit and poisoned his own family. Goddamn rich-ass bastard." He let Jokester pull him into a hug, forehead pressing into the side of a paste-white neck. Didn't return the gesture, but then he never did, never reached out; J was okay with that. He could get hugs from lots of people if he needed them, so he could afford to give as many as he wanted away. "Goddammit."

"It's not your fault, Jason," said Harley, coming around the table. "No matter what this boy's situation is, you are _not_ responsible."

"I _know _that_,_" Jason growled. Shoved his way free of Jokester and snatched the paper back. "Wayne does what he wants. We have to help him," he added. Brandishing the photo again. "If he needs it."

J nodded sharply. Harley was right, of course—nothing Owlman did was Jason's fault. But if he _had_ murdered his neighbors and appropriated their son because he felt the need to replace his escaped bird, they were a little bit responsible. "'course. Piece of cake."

"Dinner is burning, puddin'," Harley informed him.

He saved the fajitas, but saving Timothy Drake wasn't that easy. Getting close to the recently orphaned ward of _the _Bruce Wayne was hard enough for paparazzi, never mind a band of wanted lunatics, especially since they had to be able to retreat immediately if the boy _wasn't _a victim, or even if he was and was too cowed to do anything but blow the whistle on them. They came back to the project repeatedly. "Can't we just wait until he comes to us?" Waylon complained, some eight weeks in. He was the most conspicuous of all of them, even more than J, and he was sick of all the time and effort they kept pouring into plans he couldn't be part of, for the sake of one kid who might be a monster.

"Not a good idea, Croc," said Ed, after a moment of uncomfortable silence.

"Why? We don't even know if he's _going_ to be Talon, but if he is he'll be out here, without all the bodyguards and stuff keeping us back."

Jason made a disgusted sound deep in his throat. "And by then he'll be properly trained. The idea is saving him, Scales." There was a heavy, strangled silence that lasted a few seconds, and then the young Hood pushed away from the scarred table and its annotated Gotham Academy floorplans. "Believe me," the boy who had been Talon said bitterly, crossing the few steps to drop a stack of dinner dishes into the sink, and flicking the tap on so water gushed over grease and carried crumbs away. "He's not sending the new kid into the field until he's already bloody to the wrist."

As if Jason had the gift of prophecy, people started dying around Tim Drake. One of his new teachers, first. Dreadful accident, of course, a fall down the stairs. A few weeks later a Gotham Academy bully who'd been harassing the new student killed himself under suspicious circumstances. Then, during the Thanksgiving break, the boy Drake had apparently been closest to at his old boarding school passed away. Food poisoning.

"You really think he killed his best friend?" Jokester asked, the ripe plum in his mouth tasting like dry wood. Sometimes it was hard even for him to find the joke.

"If he already killed his parents, why not?" Pam shrugged, sprawled over her chair, a wide comfortable thing she had grown out of living vines. Her fortified base in Robinson Park was the safest place in Gotham, but a lot of people found the animated plants viscerally terrifying, which was a shame. "Seems like something a group like the Court of Owls would use as initiation."

Jason hadn't had anyone who mattered to him in the first place, with his mother dead, and no one knew who the first Talon had been, or whether he was still alive, so who could say. "It could just as easily be the Owl taking away everyone he can turn to." That was the _good_ option. How was that the good option?

"True," Pamela allowed. Her big green eyes narrowed on him for a moment. "You're taking this very personally. It seems like half the time I talk to you lately, you're working on this Drake problem."

"Speaking of which, apparently the duck population is spiking…"

"J."

He sighed. Busted. Sucked the last of the pulp off his plumstone and threw it overhand into the underbrush, where it blossomed into a healthy shrub-sized plum tree as he watched. "Jason feels responsible, but he was a kid in a trap. I'm the one who didn't even think about the Owl going for a replacement until it was too late."

"Could you have done anything different if you _had_ thought ahead?"

"Dunno."

Pam rolled her eyes. "I'm telling Harley you're being a moron about this," she threatened. "And yes," she added, settling back a little as she let the subject drop, "the duck population in Gotham River is improving nicely, because the pollutant reduction initiative everyone helped me with last year has already substantially improved the growth of edible waterweeds and cresses. The molluscs are doing nicely, too."

"That's great, Pam!" J leapt up and went in for a hug. Pam made a grumbling noise, but she hugged him back.

Someday, he thought, taking comfort in the patient pressure of her arms and the smell of earth and new plum blossom, Pam would leave Gotham. Back to respectable botany, or letting the League of Shadows recruit her to help regrow rainforest like they wanted, or whatever thing that was really _hers _she settled on. She was happy enough here, but this wasn't her fight, not really.

It was okay. People left. That didn't always mean you lost them.

"You really do get low just like anyone sometimes, don't you?" Pam murmured.

"'Course I do," J muttered back, a little sulky that she didn't believe this was just a congratulatory hug about molluscs, but not really. "I'm human, aren't I?" He started to let go, hugging accomplished, but Pam didn't let him.

"You're doing fine," she told him, with the kind of confidential whisper people used when they didn't know how to say things like this to other people's faces. "We save people. Didn't you all teach me not to let regret rule my life? What's done is done. Jason is getting better. All you can do for Timothy Drake is give him a chance."

She loosened the hug, then, gripped him by the biceps and held him at arm's length so she could punctuate the pep talk with raised eyebrows. "You hear me?"

"I think I got plum juice in your hair," Jokester confessed, splaying sticky hands, and Pam wrinkled her nose.

"Okay, _that_ you can regret till you die."

(As it turned out, though, the Drake case was something J was going to regret for a very long time.)

* * *

**_A/N: _**_Decided__** '**__League of Shadows' was a perfectly acceptable name for heroic ecology ninjas. They have a lemur mascot, because lemurs are the fluffy ninjas of the endangered species list. So, you think Mirror!Tim is an ambitious little monster, or just another of Bruce Wayne's victims? _


End file.
